A technical look on building a democracy

On Recycling

I recently read a blog post by a climate-denier about the need to recycle and it infuriated me. I write his claims in bold:

I called the recycle cooperation and the environmental ministry and they couldn’t justify why is it important to recycle

Well, I apologize in behalf of and I feel sorry for people who work in places because they need a job and not because they’re all knowledgable eco-freaks. That’s how life works

OK, so they’re uninformed, but why do we recycle plastic then?

Before its recycling campaign started, Israel was a very filthy place. People used to throw their plastic everywhere and you could see wherever you go. So even if it’s not so economic to recycle the plastic, the campaign is about keeping the place we live in clean, which is priceless.

Our natural resources aren’t depleting, otherwise how can you explain their dropping price?

Well, it’s a known fact that oil has already peaked, but you wrongfully measure quantity by end-user costs. What has the price soared? because from the hole from which it was extracted to the point to you pay for it, it went through so many intermediaries that you unknowingly subsidise with your tax money, it only seems things are getting cheaper because their true costs move to all sort of externalities. A simple example is the security for oil that was previously privately owned by the oil manufactures, is now the responsibility of the army, which then out-sources it to a private company; that’s a different story. point is – it’s your taxes that absorb the price increase.

We have enough space to have more landfills

The average American household create a enough waste to fill a football field each year. How many American families do we have?

It’s so wrong to say we have “spare” space. We don’t. Every inch of ground Man hasn’t already consumed is actually being used by nature. There’s life dependent on that unsullied piece of earth. And this is even before we begin to talk about your lack of desire to live next to a hell-stench smelly and rodent infested landfill.

We don’t have to cut down the rainforest to get paper. There are plenty of other forests

True, there are more forests. what are you trying to say? you do know that these forests are homes to some endangered species, right?

We can spend our money in ways much more productive than creating expensive recycled paper

True, when you’re the business owner and you don’t need to care about the environment you can spend the money to buy a yacht. ain’t that just great? Sure, why not, let someone else spend the money to clean after you, or cut down another rainforest at some distant corner of the world you never heard of. Sure, it’s much cheaper, but as long as you don’t pay for it, who cares? right?

Recycled paper is more expensive – not because its production is more expensive rather than because it’s a niche where businessmen exploit the eco-friendly people by charging them more money as they’re willing to pay that extra-money to save the environment. So our market became twisted – industry gets subsidies for clearly non-efficient and eco-harmful methods and products because that’s why people are used to be while the eco-friendly products are pushed to the eco-freaks in a high price and push everyone else away from these products.

I can go on about this forever, but that should do enough for now. And all this to say that I’m actually against recycling – I think people should simply stop producing and consuming garbage. “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Remove”. Stop buying plastic bottles with liquid sugar in them and switch to glass bottles that are cheaper and simpler to reuse (reuse is better then recycle) and let peace come to the earth.